Orange juice is an excellent source of many essential nutrients the body needs for optimum health. For example, Tropicana Products Company sells not-from-concentrate (NFC) orange juice products which provide a full day supply of Vitamin C, and are good sources of folate and potassium. Tropicana also sells orange juice which has, for example, calcium or extra Vitamin C added thereto. Such products, however, do not have antioxidants added thereto.
Tropicana also offers an orange juice product that contains 100% of recommended daily value (RDV) of Vitamin E. In order to achieve this level of Vitamin E, supplemental Vitamin E is added directly to the juice during production in the form of a water-soluble powder. This powder is added to provide a juice which has in excess of 300 ppm of tocopherol acetate or alpha-tocopherol. Previously, Tropicana offered Vitamin E enriched orange juice which had a lesser amount of alpha-tocopherol and accordingly did not have 100% of the recommended daily value of Vitamin E. Alpha-tocopherol, however, while being an excellent source of Vitamin E, is not very high in antioxidant activity. This is believed to be the result of the acetate bond therein preventing the alpha-tocopherol from acting as an antioxidant. None of these juices had any other tocopherols or antioxidants present therein.
Another example of a juice drink with Vitamin E added thereto is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,737,367 (Langer et al.). This patent discloses adding Vitamin E in the form of d-alpha tocopherol succinate to fruit juice, such as citrus juice. This type of tocopherol adds minimal antioxidant activity to the juice.
Despite these many advances in citrus juice and especially in orange juice, there still is a substantial need in the field for means that will help maintain fresh orange juice. With the present orange juice products, advantageous orange flavor notes tend to fade during storage of the juice. This results in a shorter than desired superior flavor shelf life for the juice.
Accordingly, it is a general object of the present invention to provide a means for maintaining the valuable flavor and/or sensory qualities in stored citrus and orange juice beverages.
While it has been generally known that antioxidants are useful for flavor maintenance in foods, prior efforts have not discovered an antioxidant which will mix well with citrus juice or orange juice and maintain the flavor of stored juice, and not deteriorate or negatively impact the initial flavor of the juice. This is especially the case for NFC and juice-containing beverages juices which, aside from pasteurization, are untreated.
Further, while it has been disclosed that antioxidants, such as tocopherol composition Covi-ox® T-70, can be used in fish oil-containing orange flavored beverages, see U.S. Pat. No. 4,963,380 (Schroeder et al.), such beverages are directed to stabilizing the fish oil therein. As a result, such beverages require fructose and emulsifiers in the beverage. Further, such beverages contain only small amounts of orange juice and would not qualify for labeling purposes as 100% juice or an orange juice beverage containing substantial quantities of juice.
Previously, it was believed that the addition of an oil soluble liquid to a water based juice, such as citrus juice and citrus juice beverages, would result in ringing, see for example U.S. Pat. No. 6,162,474 (Chen et al.). Ringing is the formation of a separate oil soluble layer on top of the juice. To solve this problem, Chen et al. discloses using a powder composition comprising droplets of fat-soluble vitamin which can be added to a beverage, such as citrus juice.
Accordingly, it is a further object of the present invention to provide an antioxidant which will satisfactorily mix with citrus juice, and particularly orange juice, while meeting the above objectives, which are especially important for NFC juices, but also are important in other citrus juices and citrus juice beverages.